A time gone by....

Just the other day, a topic came up in a music discussion group at work.
A colleague of mine, Ulhas V, posted this provoking image, and pondered - "Our children will never know the link between the two"



If you are among the people who are actually wondering what this picture is all about, then my friend, you have not been part of a beautiful time for music that has gone by - the age of the cassette.

I didn't have much exposure to popular mainstream music during my childhood days. Our cassette player was generally inaccessible to me because my parents figured I might damage it or something. Not sure what the reason was really. While it's true that my Dad used to follow ABBA and Michael Jackson during his time, he was more of a Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Illayaraja and Hamsalekha person. My tryst with music grew exponentially only when we moved to Mumbai. I began to feel the need, the craving for music, for an expression of my feelings. It seemed like a perfectly natural extension of my personality. I can never forget my first portable cassette player, my Sony walkman. Believe it or not, walkmans were still cool in India in 2000-2001. Cellphones were extremely bulky, definitely not meant to double up as a music player, and was more of a super luxury than a necessity. I bought many casettes during that time, lapping up the Bryan Adams, the Britney Spears, the Nsyncs and the Backstreet Boys. Rock, Metal, Hip hop and Trance came later in my life.

My walkman no longer works. May God rest its soul. Along with my cassette collection, it languishes in my house in Bengalooru. I can say my mom really knows how to preserve old stuff! But there's always a special place in my heart for my first cassette, I mean, my first purchase -
"Backstreet Boys The Greatest hits Chapter 1".


I've lost count of how many times I've listened to each and every song over and over again. And today morning, after 11 years, I once again listened to every song on my 2.1 music speakers. Let me tell you, it was bliss! I realized that I still remembered every track in its exact order.
And I was transported to my past - a simpler life.
Man, nothing evokes such powerful emotions as memories do.

Suffice to say, I had a lovely Saturday morning.
.
.